


load up your guns

by dryadfiona



Series: survive [1]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, but I'M having fun so, but like. the cult part. not the kiss part., immediately post-trailer, with that: i'm sure half of what i guess in here isn't gonna be canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-18 12:58:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18700078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dryadfiona/pseuds/dryadfiona
Summary: "This is sacrifice land," he says, and Ellie shoves her machete into his neck.





	load up your guns

"This is sacrifice land," he says, and Ellie shoves her machete into his neck.

When it doesn't quite do the job, she does it again, and his strangled breathing cuts off in a quiet exhale. Almost peaceful (if it weren't for the gaping neck wound).

She stands there for a moment just staring at him, listening intently for anyone else. When none of the cultists come up to attack her, she searches his body. He doesn't have any bullets on him, it seems, but she's able to salvage a few of the arrows. The other bodies were too damaged by the explosion to have anything valuable.

With that, she goes through the rest of the camp, stripping corpses of whatever they have. She only manages to get a few bullets--they wasted half their ammo  _missing_ her--but there's enough food for a few days' travel.

Only one of their fires is as defensible as she prefers it, so she rests there. It's hardly comfortable, but the warmth is refreshing after a few nights of harsh rain. Her hands, always cold even back at Tommy's, start to hurt a little less as she warms them.

Bloody knuckles. Callused fingers. Dina's bracelet around her wrist.

She exhales, doesn't inhale for a moment.

Fuck, she misses her.

-

A few days further along their trail, a few arrows lost, a few bullets gained. She avoids using her gun when she can, preferring her knife and her bow. Joel could be stealthy, when he wanted to--she'd seen that often enough--but it was never really  _natural_ for him. He seemed more at ease bashing skulls in with a bat than shoving a shiv in their neck. She can handle herself well enough in combat, which she'd hope is obvious given how she gutted that camp the way they gut their prisoners--

Dangerous train of thought. Moving on.

For Ellie, stealth is as normal as breathing. She's not the quietest person in the world, whispering curses and insults and jokes even as she systematically destroys a raiding party, but she manages to sneak up on the cultists more often than not, nowadays.

Torture doesn't come naturally at all.

She knows these people are far from  _innocent,_ but if she has her knife out, she doesn't want to do anything other than end it quickly.

"Just--tell me where your camp is," she says, trying not let her frustration bleed through. Her voice is quiet, raspy. She doesn't think she's talked this last week.

The cultist spits on her shoes, and she feels his nose break under her fist.

-

Dina is gone.

Even on this journey to find her, the fact still makes her freeze when she remembers it. She's gone. She was there and then she wasn't, and she doesn't know if she's alive, and if she believed in anything, she'd pray that she wasn't dead.

But she doesn't  _know_.

Ellie doesn't know if she's on a quest for revenge or reunion, or if there's any way to find her/what's left of her anyway.

The cultists, for all their many faults, are loyal. They don't give up other camps, and they don't give up each other. They fight to the last. She almost misses the seemingly endless hunters in Pittsburgh--they died  _easy._

She's in the middle of looting a body for bullets when she hears a rustling in the grass behind her. She has her bow out almost faster than she can register why she needs it, dodging back to avoid being grabbed by a man easily a foot taller than her. She aims, shoots, nearly misses his neck, but it just pierces. Not a fatal wound, but it's a start.

Ellie turns on her heels and sprints away, ignoring their whistling.

-

"Wolf!"

"Jesus  _fuck._ "

This camp has been maybe the most challenging one yet. She gets caught on trip wires and has to roll to avoid being impaled, steps on twigs and has to resort to combat, even fails to notice when someone is creeping up on  _her._

She's so goddamn close she can practically taste it. This isn't  _the_ camp, she thinks, but there's so many people here, stronger than the average cultists.

 _Better aim, too,_ she thinks, hiding under a truck, wincing when she assesses the bullet wound in her shoulder.

It's quiet, and she slowly starts to crawl out from under the car when someone grabs her legs and tries to pull her out. She kicks at whatever she can hit, and they let her go when one particularly well-placed kick gets them right in the neck.

Stealth is her forte, but she's nearly out of arrows, and it just isn't  _working._ Her pistol is a little worn, but it works, and she gets the first one between the eyes.

Ellie dodges between cover, switching to her revolver when her pistol ammo runs low. Her aim isn't as good as it is with her bow, but she's upgraded the gun enough that precision isn't all that important.

Sometimes she forgets how quick it all goes once she has her gun out. A camp that could take hours takes minutes. Her thoughts wander a bit, which is almost certainly dangerous, but she manages to shoot the bomb in someone's hands before they can throw it at her, so she's still doing okay.

She misses Dina.

Of course she misses Dina, that's  _obvious_ , but she misses things she never would've expected to. Dina is/was kind of a bitch, but she has/had a heart of gold too. Ellie remembers her shoving her off the couch to wake her up just as well as she remembers her sneaking her more food when she was sick. (Even if that had turned out to be a bad idea.) She misses their banter, Dina's groaning at her puns and surprised laugh when she actually found one funny, her passion for  _Savage Starlight,_ casual hand-holding.

She's not sure if she can say she misses kissing her, since they'd only had the one chance to.

Ellie misses Dina. But she's going to get her back.


End file.
